


Silk, Smoke, Sky

by QuailiTea



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Gen, Mild Gore, Nurses, Pre-Canon, War, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 08:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14445114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuailiTea/pseuds/QuailiTea
Summary: Created from the flashfic prompt in the title - deals with Phryne's experiences in WW1





	Silk, Smoke, Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it wasn't quite a flashfic, since it took more than two hours, but a single workday is still something, right?

The sky. Think about the sky. Think about the sky.

Phryne took a long breath and regretted it almost immediately. The air was full of smoke and the scents that smoke carried were not worth thinking about if one valued one’s sanity. She pushed her black hair back under its whitish nurse’s cap and buried her thoughts about everything except for the sky. That sky that she was sure, somewhere, must be some other color than grey. Than purple-gray-drab like the mud under their feet, the brown from soil that must have once been good soil, the pale silver from rain that must have wanted to fall on rivers and mountains. And where the red came from, it didn’t bear thinking about. She threw the ambulance into gear and willed the mud to let her go, to let them go, her and her partners, both men in the back stabilizing far more patients than the battered vehicle should really be carrying.

It had been a new ambulance three weeks ago, with a fresh-faced and freckled American at the wheel and she riding in the back as a newly-minted combat nurse. Now, the American, Aaron Lee, was dead somewhere out there, pulped or gassed or who knew what, and she was coaxing the ambulance into speed, hearing desperation in the whine of the engine where she was fairly certain shrapnel had lodged. But the tires were not spinning, they were catching, pulling them free, and she was sweet-talking and swearing and coaxing and flattering the beautiful bastard of a vehicle into moving them just a few feet more and a few feet more away from the front, away from the battery of soixante-quinze guns and the muzzle flashes and the ragged hospital tent that should have been safe, but of course it was war, and nothing was safe, really. She had never thought to use her powers of persuasion on a truck before, but behind the smoke, there might well have been a lover there. Her first lover, now he would have responded like this, she thought as they bottomed out in a pothole, and she hummed and soothed at the squealing the ambulance gave. “Come on now, just a little bump now darling, you won’t stop at the first sign of trouble now, would you? Let’s keep going darling, I promise you things will be fine and lovely and vanilla biscuits at the end.” The ambulance grumbled and kept going. Phryne thought about the sky, about the silken stripes that had rolled across it three nights ago, wisps of cloud as delicate as fine chiffon, in mist-grey and sober navy and a luxurious purple that she had resolved would never again fail to be part of her wardrobe if she ever got out of here. They were in France, were they not? She would find herself a couturier, never mind the money or lack thereof, or anything else, and she would break in at night and swath herself in silk and satin and lace and fox and if the gendarmes found her in the morning nesting in a pile of ballgowns with an absurd hat on her head, they could arrest her looking that way.

Phryne spent the next few miles dodging shell holes and smoking metal and not thinking about the sounds of the guns beginning to wind up again. She thought about the ballgown the gendarmes would arrest her in: a fetching confection in, oh, what color now? Lilac seemed too drab, too unambitious. Maybe coral, with lace piled over top in diaphanous and scandalous layers. Emerald green, up to her chin, with ostrich feathers to tickle her ears. Or maybe pristine ivory, in a single, soothing column that pooled at her heels and let her stride out before the arresting policemen as Athena at the head of a phalanx of unwilling devotees. Gold bangles up her bare arms, kohl around her eyes, she would cut a figure so grand they would carry her to the police station on a palanquin.

With a crashing bump that drew profanity from the men in the back, the wheels of the ambulance found the road. New shell-holes had appeared since Lee had driven down the road this morning, and evening was coming on now. But she coaxed and flirted with the engine, pleading for a few more miles darling, and then a truly nice rest and a wash for the both of them. The burlap screens flapped from the posts that had been erected to screen the road from the view of the enemy, but the twilight was beginning to fall, and they were safe for the moment. When the smoke cleared, patches of the rising moonlight kept their way lit, and she felt like a woman out of a Gothic novel, finding her way home after the ball, feet much abused, by no other light but that of the serendipitous moon, her cab driver having run off with the scullery maid and leaving her to herd her willful steed along an unfamiliar road.

She wondered how many of the six they had crammed into the back were still alive. The youngest wasn’t likely, she had only counted two limbs remaining of four. Better not to think about it. Think about the sky. The moonlight winked through the burlap as the wind gusted, moving the clouds of smoke away for the moment, but carrying the noises of nighttime at the front along with it. She wished the ambulance were a little quieter, but there’s no help for it but to hope the rush of wind here and there would cover the grumbling and growling. She soothed her machine again, grateful that it wasn’t popping and making them sound like a rifle in the silken, smoky evening. Think about the sky, Phryne, follow the road as fast as you can and think about the sky. She put her foot down, and the whining of the engine grew, but not to an alarming pitch.

The hospital was coming into view, and the sodium lights gleamed a welcome glare onto the road that had become dustier as it dried in the night breeze. The smell was still foul, engine exhaust and gunpowder and the sickly-exhaled sighs of the dying and recovering all mingled, but less choking without the undertone of threatened mustard gas and desperate clutching. Phryne flung open the doors of her ambulance to free her partners and help them unload whoever had survived. They were a fright, every one of them, filthy with dirt and blood, their eyes blinking and flinching under the lights of the medical camp. The boy hadn’t made it. Neither had the man next to him, who had vomited up something that was likely an organ and expired. But the other four were there, clinging to life, two sick with fever, one bandaged with most of the linen the vehicle carrier, another with plasters over his face so much that she doubted he could see at all. “Last stop, gentlemen,” she said with a forced cheer that she knew they appreciated, even though she found it bewildering. “Pay your fares to the lady in blue.”

They lifted out the stretchers, and the plastered and blind man let himself be handed down before taking her elbow. “Ma’am, usually I’d escort you, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask that you do the leading for the moment.” Her laugh rang hollow in her own ears, but she guided him gently to the proper tent for intake and registration, helping him find his tags, and promising to come visit once he’d had a bath and a proper course of penicillin and coal tar soap. They must have given him a good dose of morphine to keep him in spirits while they tended to the burns.

“Well done, Nurse Fisher,” came a voice with a tinge of a Scottish brogue. “Thought we were done for when the bus got stuck that second time.”

“Thank you, Anders,” she replied, as the thin, sandy-haired man emerged from the darkness. He was one of the stretcher-bearers, shaking his hands dry after a quick rinse under the tap. “It was a near thing, but a little well-placed vulgar flattery seems to have done the trick. Which reminds me, I owe it a bath.”

“I’ll help you,” he said genially, “one must keep one’s promises as well as one’s threats.”

“How loud was I swearing?” she asked as they trundled the limping, whining, billowing ambulance down to the depot.

“Not loud enough to be overheard except by us, but we are all in deep admiration of your persuasive command of the epithet,” the man said, smirking. “If you had been any bluer, we could have hidden in the fog you created.”

“I’ll try a little harder next time,” Phryne said, a wry twist to her lips. “We could have used the cover, for Lee’s sake.” Anders nodded, the grim memory clearly near the forefront for him as well. The pair lapsed into silence as they washed and stocked their ambulance back up, then Anders turned to the exhausted Phryne.

“I was a mechanic back home,” he ventured. “Would you like me to see if I can find the source of that whine we heard?”

“I did promise,” she said. Unspoken by either of them was who that promise had been made to. Anders popped the hood, and Phryne handed him tools in the quiet bustle of the evening. The sky went from twilight, to cobalt, to silken black, then slowly to grey and sunrise once more. The dawn broke over a fixed engine, Anders bundled under a heavy woolen blanket in the seat of the ambulance, snoring like a freight train, and Phryne lying on her back on top of the vehicle, looking up at the sky. A bad day. But they, she, Anders, the others, still had days to come, she had assured them all of that. She thought of the fine car she would buy some day, with wide, plush seats and an engine that never stalled or whined or smoked, and went as fast as you could ever want it to go. She watched the sky with its thin bands of rain clouds wafting peaceably away, and did not think of anything else.


End file.
